The announcement Oct. 16 by BB&T Corp. that it expects to add about 1,700 Triad jobs during the next five years as it takes over the former American Express call center shows the bank is planning a rapid increase on top of what has already been solid local growth.

Winston-Salem-based BB&T (NYSE: BBT), already applauded by analysts as one of the strongest survivors of the 2008 financial crisis, had 3,160 employees in the Triad in August of this year, according to Business Journal research. That was 619 more — an increase of 24 percent — versus August 2008, just before the financial crisis began.

Adding 1,700 employees by the end of 2017 would boost BB&T’s Triad employment by more than 50 percent again, to 4,860. The 1,700 new jobs would be part of 2,500 total employees that BB&T expects to house in the former AmEx building as part of a consolidation of several offices and organic growth in various parts of the company.

BB&T officials said they could not yet specify which of its existing offices might be included in that consolidation, though they said the Winston-Salem headquarters would not be negatively impacted.

The employees the bank expects to fill what is now BB&T Triad Corporate Center are primarily back-office positions in administrative and support functions, the bank said. BB&T has signed a seven-year sublease for the property near Piedmont Triad International Airport, which is owned by Illinois-based Inland American Real Estate Trust. No government incentives were involved in the expansion.

What’s creating the jobs?

BB&T Chief Operating Officer Chris Henson said between 50 and 100 employees would move into the facility by the end of this year, with more being added over time.

Though he declined to go into the specifics of how the bank arrived at the 1,700-job projection, Henson said BB&T has been in a period of rapid growth, both through organic expansion and big recent acquisitions. Earlier this year, it took over Florida-based BankAtlantic with $3.3 billion in customer deposits and acquired Crump Insurance for $570 million in cash.

There are other areas such as wealth management and mortgage lending where Henson said BB&T’s staffing is small right now relative to growth potential, and growth just about anywhere in the operation also adds to the resources needed to keep up with regulations. So BB&T’s optimistic outlook for its growth in the Triad in administrative and support operations is justified, he said.

“When you start folding in both acquisitions and organic growth in all these areas, you need more back room support for all of the above,” he said.

Weathered recession well

It’s no surprise that BB&T is expecting rapid growth given how well it has come through the recession, said Tony Plath, a finance professor at UNC-Charlotte. It broke into the list of the 10 largest banks in the nation by customer deposits this year according to the FDIC, and it has been able to focus more on customer growth than many rivals because its loan portfolio wasn’t affected as badly by the downturn as others, Plath said.

Plath noted that the impact of the growth will be spread over several years, but the direction still runs counter to what has been anemic or even negative overall growth by many banks. According to FDIC reports, BB&T’s own total employee count grew by 4.7 percent from June 2011 to June 2012, and several rivals at both the regional and community bank levels have seen negative or single-digit employee growth.

“They’re not going to go out and hire all these people immediately,” Plath said. “It’s going to be spread out, and I’m sure it will be contingent on continuing to gain market share and customer traction. But it’s consistent with their expanding footprint, and they’ve been doing a really good job in terms of organic growth.”

Strategic hiring

While growth in job numbers is spotty, there are trends working in favor of bank hiring overall, said Jaime Nashbar of Castlestream Recruiting in Matthews, which focuses on the banking sector.

Nashbar said she’s seeing a lot of interest in hiring right now from banks that are trying to find revenue streams to replace the still-cold commercial real estate and other lending markets. For some banks, that means adding new departments for SBA lending or wealth management, for example, and hiring employees to staff them.

“The other side of that is that with so much focus on growth out in the field, you also really need to be taking at look at processes and operations in the back room that are needed to sustain that growth. So you see more e-banking, loan operations, those types of positions,” she said.